Apple defines personal information as "data that can be used to identify or contact a single person." Which means their statement above is pretty much the same as Google when it comes to privacy.
We may share non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners – like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services.
You don't seem to understand how modern cell phones, including iPhones, actually work. They don't transmit everything to a server. They do listen for a wake word using very little power.
Fair point. I don't know how ZDnet works, but proper publishers used to have editors. It's quite possible for someone to be an interesting, informative and engaging reader without them having to be a good typist or speller.
It's quite possible that, in the online world, editors have gone the way of buggy-whip manufacturers. Unfortunately, while the internal combustion engine might have won out due to performance and convenience, self-editing wins only because of cost-savings. And we all get to suffer the results.
Totally agree, following a recent experience with an iPad Pro. Previously you could use Siri from across the room, much like you would do with an Amazon Echo or Google Home. Want to start some music, ask Siri. Want to Set an alarm, ask Siri.
The latest version of iOS disables Siri if you have a cover on your iPad. So if you're baking and just want a times, you'd have to wash your hands, walk to your iPad and remove the cover.
So for a product which is intended to have a cover over it whenever it's not being used, unlike say an iPhone, Siri is permanently disabled when it's not in use. This, Apple support has stated, is by design, though it looks more like they rolled out a feature to disable Siri on iPhones when they're in a pocket and then didn't care about any knock-on consequences. Rather than acknowledge a mistake, or even to make available a toggle so the end-user can choose, they just say this is what they want and the customer needs to live with it.
If they had a loan, let's hope they also had gap cover, because an almost new car was worth a lot less than they would have paid for it just a couple of months previously. And, unfortunately for them, all they would get from an insurer is enough to buy a replacement second-hand car.
They'd also be significant losers if they made a substantial down-payment. Gap insurance would pay of a loan for the full value of a new car, but if they'd put down 30% (perhaps as a result of a trade-in), their insurer would pay off the loan and give them a tiny amount back.
So I never owned a car in the UK, but do the engines there have different service intervals? Is there some difference because of the typically smaller engines in the UK?
Our old Focus had a 5k service interval that required an oil change, but it had a 2.3l engine that wasn't available in the UK (where folk might balk at 23 miles to the US gallon).
Isn't Chrome just a free browser? Why would Google want Amazon to "sell" that? Not sure what a chrome cast is....
Google want Amazon to sell their Chromecast which allows users to stream video/audio to televisions/speakers. A bit like the Fire Stick, but without any build-in applications. You "cast' from your phone/laptop and, under typical use, once cast it no longer requires any input from that device.
I agree, though in this instance it does look like Amazon started it.
There's no good reason for Amazon not to sell things like Chromecasts or Google Home devices other than they don't want to concede any market-share to Google. To then want Google services on their own devices is a bit rich.
The consumer wins when there's competition. A marketplace for smart devices that doesn't end up with 95% being Echos, or 95% being homes is one that will spur innovation. It's also one that will give greater incentive for security and privacy. If/when there's a hugely dominant vendor, all incentives to improve are gone and all we're left with is how to monetize the users.
I think there's another reason at play here. Google are enforcing strict HTTPS on all their domains. This means browsers should always be using HTTPS to access any site under a google owned tld, including.dev.
Chrome, by enforcing this at the code level, is enabling another level of security for customers; preventing third party operators trying to downgrade or degrade what should always be a secure connection.
The only people being burned are those folk who used a valid domain name for their internal dev environments, and have continued to do so for 2 1/2 years after Google took ownership of the TLD. I imagine it's those very developers, slow to respond to change, that Google wants to nudge more strongly towards site-wide encryption.
I'm expect that using the system tools to block access to the address book is probably sufficient on Android and iOS - so long as it's done before the app is ever launched.
What surprises me more is that people don't consider geolocation. Many many facebook users share their location with Facebook. It's then trivial for facebook to see that you are repeatedly in the same location at the same time as another person.
That lawyer might have met defense counsel at a couple of mediation hearings in a lawyer's office, then they went to the same court house at the same time every day for a week. It's easy to suppose they know each other.
Similarly for the sex worker who meets the same client at a handful of different hotels. Both their phones arrived at the hotel at the same time on the same days. Then they left together. Again, the connection is trivial.
At least with Google, you are paid for this data with better traffic reports and better directions. You can decide if that is worth it or not. With Facebook it seems you get nothing in return while they amass a huge amount of information you thought was private.
1. Most of the big name delivery drivers are paid a living wage. They have a reduced incentive to go rogue (I didn't say NO incentive). I assume this will continue to apply to whoever winds up with these delivery permissions.
Interestingly, this is one of the things that turned me off. Amazon are increasingly defaulting to Amazon Logistics to deliver rather than UPS/FedEx/USPS. Now, instead of getting a driver in a uniform with a union job, decent benefits and a pension plan, I get a guy that owns a white van. Where previously there was a large incentive not to go rogue, that is markedly diminished if the folk delivering are self-employed in the gig economy with less income and stability.
Other than that, I would have considered, mainly because my house layout would at least have allowed me to restrict most access beyond the first room.
It's got to be substantially more than just a hash and a title being stored.
Why is that? A fingerprint contains a huge amount of data, yet a fingerprint reader will condense it down into a small number of points and represent the entire thing as a digit or string of digits. Why can't a computer do the same with music, creating what is essentially a hash and matching that to a database of titles?
Did they find the fault, or have you made three visits and each time been left with a faulty computer? Were you abandoned with a still broken computer? The summary seems incomplete.
Is this a warning that we need lemon laws for computers as well as cars? At what point does Apple recognize that a repeatable and verifiable problem, even if intermittent, requires a product replacement?
Dude, you're using a proprietary voice assistant. Of course its primary purpose is to lock you in.
Strange - I was an early adopter of Amazon's Echo. Just last month I switched to Google Home.
The Google device works better for me, but I don't see any feature that I couldn't get by switching again. Setting up the Google Home to control various smart devices was a matter of minutes.
Put simply, there's nothing in the voice assistant that cannot be replicated or replaced. What's important is access to the data - primarily email and calendaring. Ironically, Google has access to the calendar data, but seems hesitant to use it as they only support the primary calendar for a user's google account. If, for example, you also have a work calendar, Google Home ignores it.
If that's the case, it's still easy to make the association. She may be sharing GPS information on her phone via the facebook client. Facebook know she and her clients are regularly in the same place at the same time. If she uses hotels and connects to the hotel wifi, facebook could get that information without even needing the GPS information. Knowing that two people independently arrive at the Holiday Inn on Acacia Avenue at 7pm every second Wednesday for four months would easily be enough to suggest they might know each other.
Then there are all the other associations - did they "check in" to the same hotels, bars, restaurants? Do they "like" similar things since they spend time in the same places?
Sharing the IP address with somebody doesn't mean they are related, it can also mean they share the same Internet Service Provider, they work in the same company, they sit in the same Starbucks, they use the same VPN,....
However Facebook know much more than that. Unless she exclusively uses private browsing or clears cookies after each use, they likely know the two profiles share the same laptop and phone. Every web page she visits that has a facebook "like" button may be sending back the cookies associated with both accounts. It's unlikely that logging out an account deletes the associated cookies.
So the same device logs in to account 1 from an IP, then account 2 from the same IP. Later at a coffee shop, the same happens. And the next day it happens from the work IP on a second device. Quickly you realize the accounts are related in some way.
It would be less likely with two devices - than only the fact that they're logging in from one IP would be shared and a VPN could be used to route around that too.
Amazon Echo lets you "Play music until..." just fine. A timer plug is a rather blunt and technologically brutish way to solve the problem.
While I agree that the absence of a sleep timer is, at this point, inexcusable for Google, Amazon too launched their echo without this feature, only adding it about four months later.
There's a pretty huge difference between saying for best audio quality you need headphones made by us, our subsidiaries, or those who are paying us a licensing fee (Apple) and "Seamless fast pairing? You need Android N or higher, which most Android phones don't have." (Google).
Google haven't added something to the phone that means only headphones they produce or license can work, instead they added something to a headphone. And others could make headphones that do the same thing without paying special fees to Google. And the OS requirement doesn't mean you need a Nexus or Pixel phone, it could be from Motorola, or Samsung or LG or countless others.
You've been lucky. I had Amazon delivery - which really seems to be Amazon contracting to anyone with a white van - and it was woeful.
Delivery was late by a day. There was zero tracking between leaving the warehouse and delivery, which meant there's no way to know if your package will actually be delivered that day. At least with UPS/FedEX you know if it made it to the depot on time, you know if it made it on the delivery truck that morning and therefore you know it's very likely to be on your doorstep that night.
I wasn't surprised by Amazon trying to take control of last mile delivery. I was, however, surprised that they were willing to roll something out that was markedly worse that what it was supposed to replace.
Slashdot Mirror
A wildcard SSL certificate is under $50/year.
Apple defines personal information as "data that can be used to identify or contact a single person." Which means their statement above is pretty much the same as Google when it comes to privacy.
Google says:
You don't seem to understand how modern cell phones, including iPhones, actually work. They don't transmit everything to a server. They do listen for a wake word using very little power.
Fair point. I don't know how ZDnet works, but proper publishers used to have editors. It's quite possible for someone to be an interesting, informative and engaging reader without them having to be a good typist or speller.
It's quite possible that, in the online world, editors have gone the way of buggy-whip manufacturers. Unfortunately, while the internal combustion engine might have won out due to performance and convenience, self-editing wins only because of cost-savings. And we all get to suffer the results.
Fixed that for you :)
Totally agree, following a recent experience with an iPad Pro. Previously you could use Siri from across the room, much like you would do with an Amazon Echo or Google Home. Want to start some music, ask Siri. Want to Set an alarm, ask Siri.
The latest version of iOS disables Siri if you have a cover on your iPad. So if you're baking and just want a times, you'd have to wash your hands, walk to your iPad and remove the cover.
So for a product which is intended to have a cover over it whenever it's not being used, unlike say an iPhone, Siri is permanently disabled when it's not in use. This, Apple support has stated, is by design, though it looks more like they rolled out a feature to disable Siri on iPhones when they're in a pocket and then didn't care about any knock-on consequences. Rather than acknowledge a mistake, or even to make available a toggle so the end-user can choose, they just say this is what they want and the customer needs to live with it.
Number plate recognition can be defeated by this newfangled technology.
If they had a loan, let's hope they also had gap cover, because an almost new car was worth a lot less than they would have paid for it just a couple of months previously. And, unfortunately for them, all they would get from an insurer is enough to buy a replacement second-hand car.
They'd also be significant losers if they made a substantial down-payment. Gap insurance would pay of a loan for the full value of a new car, but if they'd put down 30% (perhaps as a result of a trade-in), their insurer would pay off the loan and give them a tiny amount back.
So I never owned a car in the UK, but do the engines there have different service intervals? Is there some difference because of the typically smaller engines in the UK?
Our old Focus had a 5k service interval that required an oil change, but it had a 2.3l engine that wasn't available in the UK (where folk might balk at 23 miles to the US gallon).
Google want Amazon to sell their Chromecast which allows users to stream video/audio to televisions/speakers. A bit like the Fire Stick, but without any build-in applications. You "cast' from your phone/laptop and, under typical use, once cast it no longer requires any input from that device.
I agree, though in this instance it does look like Amazon started it.
There's no good reason for Amazon not to sell things like Chromecasts or Google Home devices other than they don't want to concede any market-share to Google. To then want Google services on their own devices is a bit rich.
The consumer wins when there's competition. A marketplace for smart devices that doesn't end up with 95% being Echos, or 95% being homes is one that will spur innovation. It's also one that will give greater incentive for security and privacy. If/when there's a hugely dominant vendor, all incentives to improve are gone and all we're left with is how to monetize the users.
I think there's another reason at play here. Google are enforcing strict HTTPS on all their domains. This means browsers should always be using HTTPS to access any site under a google owned tld, including .dev.
Chrome, by enforcing this at the code level, is enabling another level of security for customers; preventing third party operators trying to downgrade or degrade what should always be a secure connection.
The only people being burned are those folk who used a valid domain name for their internal dev environments, and have continued to do so for 2 1/2 years after Google took ownership of the TLD. I imagine it's those very developers, slow to respond to change, that Google wants to nudge more strongly towards site-wide encryption.
At which point we would expect them to update Chrome accordingly.
Here's some stuff discussing Target's ability to identify customers who are expecting. This is, apparently, big business.
I'm expect that using the system tools to block access to the address book is probably sufficient on Android and iOS - so long as it's done before the app is ever launched.
What surprises me more is that people don't consider geolocation. Many many facebook users share their location with Facebook. It's then trivial for facebook to see that you are repeatedly in the same location at the same time as another person.
That lawyer might have met defense counsel at a couple of mediation hearings in a lawyer's office, then they went to the same court house at the same time every day for a week. It's easy to suppose they know each other.
Similarly for the sex worker who meets the same client at a handful of different hotels. Both their phones arrived at the hotel at the same time on the same days. Then they left together. Again, the connection is trivial.
At least with Google, you are paid for this data with better traffic reports and better directions. You can decide if that is worth it or not. With Facebook it seems you get nothing in return while they amass a huge amount of information you thought was private.
Interestingly, this is one of the things that turned me off. Amazon are increasingly defaulting to Amazon Logistics to deliver rather than UPS/FedEx/USPS. Now, instead of getting a driver in a uniform with a union job, decent benefits and a pension plan, I get a guy that owns a white van. Where previously there was a large incentive not to go rogue, that is markedly diminished if the folk delivering are self-employed in the gig economy with less income and stability.
Other than that, I would have considered, mainly because my house layout would at least have allowed me to restrict most access beyond the first room.
Why is that? A fingerprint contains a huge amount of data, yet a fingerprint reader will condense it down into a small number of points and represent the entire thing as a digit or string of digits. Why can't a computer do the same with music, creating what is essentially a hash and matching that to a database of titles?
Did they find the fault, or have you made three visits and each time been left with a faulty computer? Were you abandoned with a still broken computer? The summary seems incomplete.
Is this a warning that we need lemon laws for computers as well as cars? At what point does Apple recognize that a repeatable and verifiable problem, even if intermittent, requires a product replacement?
Strange - I was an early adopter of Amazon's Echo. Just last month I switched to Google Home.
The Google device works better for me, but I don't see any feature that I couldn't get by switching again. Setting up the Google Home to control various smart devices was a matter of minutes.
Put simply, there's nothing in the voice assistant that cannot be replicated or replaced. What's important is access to the data - primarily email and calendaring. Ironically, Google has access to the calendar data, but seems hesitant to use it as they only support the primary calendar for a user's google account. If, for example, you also have a work calendar, Google Home ignores it.
If that's the case, it's still easy to make the association. She may be sharing GPS information on her phone via the facebook client. Facebook know she and her clients are regularly in the same place at the same time. If she uses hotels and connects to the hotel wifi, facebook could get that information without even needing the GPS information. Knowing that two people independently arrive at the Holiday Inn on Acacia Avenue at 7pm every second Wednesday for four months would easily be enough to suggest they might know each other.
Then there are all the other associations - did they "check in" to the same hotels, bars, restaurants? Do they "like" similar things since they spend time in the same places?
However Facebook know much more than that. Unless she exclusively uses private browsing or clears cookies after each use, they likely know the two profiles share the same laptop and phone. Every web page she visits that has a facebook "like" button may be sending back the cookies associated with both accounts. It's unlikely that logging out an account deletes the associated cookies.
So the same device logs in to account 1 from an IP, then account 2 from the same IP. Later at a coffee shop, the same happens. And the next day it happens from the work IP on a second device. Quickly you realize the accounts are related in some way.
It would be less likely with two devices - than only the fact that they're logging in from one IP would be shared and a VPN could be used to route around that too.
While I agree that the absence of a sleep timer is, at this point, inexcusable for Google, Amazon too launched their echo without this feature, only adding it about four months later.
There's a pretty huge difference between saying for best audio quality you need headphones made by us, our subsidiaries, or those who are paying us a licensing fee (Apple) and "Seamless fast pairing? You need Android N or higher, which most Android phones don't have." (Google).
Google haven't added something to the phone that means only headphones they produce or license can work, instead they added something to a headphone. And others could make headphones that do the same thing without paying special fees to Google. And the OS requirement doesn't mean you need a Nexus or Pixel phone, it could be from Motorola, or Samsung or LG or countless others.
You've been lucky. I had Amazon delivery - which really seems to be Amazon contracting to anyone with a white van - and it was woeful.
Delivery was late by a day. There was zero tracking between leaving the warehouse and delivery, which meant there's no way to know if your package will actually be delivered that day. At least with UPS/FedEX you know if it made it to the depot on time, you know if it made it on the delivery truck that morning and therefore you know it's very likely to be on your doorstep that night.
I wasn't surprised by Amazon trying to take control of last mile delivery. I was, however, surprised that they were willing to roll something out that was markedly worse that what it was supposed to replace.
OK, so now explain how it achieves all transfer to and from the mothership that without a friggin internet connection?